


Home, Sweet

by bendy_quill



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendy_quill/pseuds/bendy_quill
Summary: In the aftermath of their lovemaking, Ryder and Jaal have a conversation about home.





	

Cool flecks of water cling to her skin from the heavy rush of the waterfall behind them and slowly rouse her to complete consciousness. One look outside and she sees that night blankets the Aya with a million stars twinkling in the long stretch of blue-black sky. All manner of critters and creatures still roam about, skittering between the bushes or chirping into the silence as they make their way through the beautiful night. This place is a little paradise, everything she hopes Andromeda is going to be before she is put into a deep and cold sleep, but somehow it’s even more than that.

Fingertips graze her flesh and she sucks in a breath. Jaal gently squeezes her, arms tightly winding around her waist and face pressing in her hair. He shifts and grumbles a little bit, legs further tangling with hers and there is a whisper of Shelesh that she can barely decipher in her ear. 

“I lied to you,” Drea says.

“Sorry?”

“Before. When you asked about my favorite place in the universe.” 

Palms press against her and that feeling spreads across her skin again, a steady pulse at his fingertips tingling all along every inch of her he carresses. She remembers something about touch, about angara and their fine control over their bioelectric fields, but it doesn’t really click with her right now. Not when he holds her like this. Drea shudders, very faint shocks still jumping from his skin to hers, or maybe it’s because she suddenly recalls the past few hours of kisses trailing over her body with the same intensity rippling beneath her skin from every touch. 

“There’s a place back where I’m from, back in the Milky Way,” she starts. “It was out in the middle of nowhere but it’s where my parents raised me before we moved to the Citadel. Tannem. My dad’s father lived there.”

Jaal is silent for a little while, sharp eyes glowing in the darkness as he stares openly at her face. Sometimes, it is hard to gauge him. He wears his heart on his sleeve but even then there are moments when she can’t tell what he’s thinking when they are alone.

“Tell me about Tannem. What was it like?”

“Quiet. Peaceful.” Images piece together in her mind—green fields with sleek homes in the distance, a bustling port on the water, and the house her mother and father purchase shortly after they marry. “My parents bought a house near a beach and I remember being there every other day.” A younger version of her with band-aids on her knees and hair arranged into twin puffs stares out at the sea. The abyss stretches on as day and night take turns creeping over the horizon, stars twinkling in the blue-black sky and waves crashing into the shore. “I think that’s where I fell in love with the thought of adventure. Staring out at that sea, I always wondered was what on the other side of it. I wondered how deep it was and if it went on forever.”

Jaal kisses her temple and then her forehead, electrifying touch still lingering even as he pulls away, but turns into something calming and warm as he carefully tries to stroke her hair. She laughs the first time he tries emulating what he sees in the vids Liam recommends to him. Fingers can’t exactly run through these curls, but he tries his best to accommodate her because touching is something he refuses to deprive her of.

“You talk about beaches very often,” he says. “On Elaaden and on the Tempest with Cora. Is that why you were so fond of Tannem? Because of the beaches?”

Drea nods. “I don’t know what drew me to them but I just remember how much I loved being near the water. At night, it just seemed like the water went on forever. Sometimes the moon would be in the sky and everything would be lit up. Most of the times, there wasn’t anything. Just a lot of water, sand, and stars.” Silence takes hold of her and Jaal doesn’t stop staring. “My mother would come down sometimes and sit with me on the beach. She—oh god, this is so corny. Once, she told me that the universe was kind of like the sea.” She stretches her hand to the sky the same way her mother does in her memories, pointing at the rocks all along the roof of the cave instead of at the billions of stars. “She said, ‘Drea, there’s a whole universe that’s waiting for you. You’ll cut through the stars searching for your own treasure at some point and, when it happens, you’ll never want to come back home.’”

“She was right,” Jaal chuckles. “You’re here now, in a new place you are trying to make home.” He frowns suddenly and she realizes that she wears a long expression on her face. “Ah. But you still miss your old home.”

“Yeah,” she responds, nodding. “I thought… I thought I was getting past this but sometimes it creeps up every now and again.”

“I should think so. You left behind more than just Tannem.” Her chest tightens at the somber truth he tells. “And you’ve mentioned many times that going back is not a choice you have right now. You miss it. I would too.”

“But, you know,” she interjects, “I don’t regret it. I don’t regret leaving it all behind.”

She says goodbye to so many of her friends that weren’t accepted into the Initiative, even more that couldn’t bring themselves to take that risk. Her grandparents break her heart the worst but they make her promise to take care of herself before she leaves with her father and brother. 

Drea makes peace with knowing that she can’t ever come back to the world she grows up in. Dread eats at her. Fear tears at her. But she swallows it all down and takes the leap anyway. 

“There was a universe waiting for you to discover it.” Jaal cups her face and turns her head towards him, makes her see the warmth in his eyes and feel the tenderness in his words. “She knew you would find it one day.”

“Maybe.” She is silent for a long moment and then laughs. “I used to comb the beach for seashells. My grandmother was an archaeologist and would show me pictures of all the cool places she used to go to. I wanted to be like her.”

“That’s very cute.”

“Stop! Don’t say that!” Drea tries to cover her face but Jaal simply laughs and pulls her tighter to him. She is crushed to his chest, hands partially covering her face and laughter bursting between the two of them. “I was six! I didn’t know any better!”

“I can see you as a child, no taller than my knees, with the same smile on your face as you pick through the sand looking for shells. And you probably tracked sand all over the house.”

Heat fills her cheeks as she nods. “I shouldn’t have told you this.”

“But I like hearing about these things. I…like knowing about you. About the people you knew and the places you’ve been.” She already knows what he means to say as he trails off, not wanting to invoke the heartache she feels earlier. “I want you to love it here. I want you to love the new places you call home and the places that have yet to become home. I’m sorry it…sounds so selfish to want you to love a new home while you miss the other.”

She shakes her head. “Sounds like you want me to be happy, if anything.” 

Drea lightly traces the scar on his cheek where Aksuul’s bullet barely grazes him. She distinctly remembers what he says when Lexi finishes dressing his wound—scars will heal over time. Things that were once painful can still be, but the wound that is left can mend. There is a lot that needs to be mended.

Her heart for one—where to begin is a question she still asks herself. 

Does she start with the one left by a father taken from her too soon? 

Or the home she finds herself still yearning for, now six hundred years older and likely unrecognizable at this point?

“I do love it here,” she says quietly, still looking up at him and the smile that reaches his eyes—Drea graces him with one as well. “You’re here. My brother is here and the crew is here. There’s lots of stuff that’s here that’s making this much easier to bear.”

Jaal stares deep into her eyes, almost as if he could put holes in her skull with the intensity of his gaze. “I…am glad then. I want you to love this place. I want you to be happy.”

“I am,” she says rather quickly. “I will be. I know I will.”

A chill rushes up her spine and, somehow, they huddle closer. She tucks her head near his heart where she can hear it beating proudly despite the gushing waterfall right behind them, and a comfortable quiet settles between them.


End file.
